| The Bottom of the Box This is often one of the favourite sections of the readers, and the least favourite of Sarge and mine's, mainly because some of these weapons are just downright dangerous. These are the plain silly weapons that have come to us, and we've brought a couple up to test our patience once again. The Commanche Pulse Rifle This rifle is truly ridiculous. Apparently, Commanche was hoping that Special Forces would pick up the weapon, but why Special Forces would even consider it is beyond me. The weapon, for starters, is large and blocky, and comes painted in bright colours. Second of all, the "Squad Assault Weapon" (LMG) is built around the .177 calibre. You read right, this thing fires specially designed BB-gun pellets. It tries to sell itself on an ultra high firing rate, but lets face it...with rounds this large, its not going to really matter how many times you fire it, right? The penetration is, as expected, woeful. Like most SAWs, it cant fire in single round mode, and its ultra-high rate of fire means that each time you pull the trigger, you're spitting out 6 or more rounds. To get any decent watermelon splatter, we had to turn it onto full automatic and fire at least twenty rounds to get any decent effect. What's worse is, the weapon comes with only a 100 round clip, meaning after around three to six seconds of constant firing, you're out of ammunition, and you've no chance of spreading your fire since each target takes so many rounds to drop. The ammunition doesn't come in a belt feed, and isn't cheap, either, at 250 yen for a box of 50. And you cant even reload the clips without special tools, taking forever. The ammunition itself is hard to get, as well, but even harder is the rifle itself, being prohibitively expensive and rare. You cant get variant ammunition, such as Ex Ex, which is probably a good thing. The reason for this is the rate of fire makes over-heating a real problem, and the blast back from the weapon (which is caseless) is likely to fill the clip with hot gas. While the propellant wouldn't cook off, any attempts to make the round capable of doing more than annoying your opponent with Ex-Ex would probably see the rifle blow up, taking both your hands and an eye with it. To top it all off, Commanche developed a special "Ultramini" grenade launcher. This makes the weapon perhaps a little more scary for anyone not holding it, however Commanche managed to make the ultramini grenade totally gutless...and you guess it, like the .177 ammunition, its specially made, expensive and hard as hell to find. http://www.oocities.org/Area51/Vault/7157/sr2.htm#Pulse JF-3 Power Shotgun Alltek Arms recently released the JF-3 'Power Shotgun'. We here at SOF were pretty skeptical at anything called a "Power Shotgun", since it sounds like it was designed by some 12 year old Manga kid. Now, I recommend this to everyone getting the new 'next best thing, supergun'. The first thing you want to do is check out the round you're chambering. The JF-3 uses a special "Condensed Energy" formula, which I immediately likened to something you'd put in a dessert you were making. Let me tell you folks out there, someone gives you a "Condensed Energy" weapon to fire, you don't say no...shoot to kill. Sarge and I thought the shotgun shells were a bit suss...the manufacturer touted the 12 gauge to have penetration and man stopping capabilities far beyond that of a 10 gauge shotgun, especially at close range, and armour piercing abilities of a sniper rifle. The shell was really a titanium slug packed in with patented "Energy Cubes". The firing mechanism was electronic, rather than mechanical. Being the smart guys we are, we set the weapon up on a jury rigged stand and fired it using a piece of cord. The rifle kicked with a puff of smoke, and the Sarge likened the recoil to that of an assault cannon judging how it knocked over our stand. The second shot, once we got it back on the stand and facing well away from us, blew the ass out of the weapon and warped the barrel. You guessed it, their "Energy Cubes" were really blocks of C-12. I hear they were trying to make a Burst fire weapon to compete with Mossberg and Ingram. Its no wonder they're in short supply of testers. http://www.oocities.org/TimesSquare/Lair/1759/shadowrun.html |